The King of Attolia (16 page)

“I think he did,” said one of the others.

“And she—”

“And I think,” said Hilarion, cutting short further discussion, “that we are not all needed here, and as all of us have been up through the night, some of us, at least, should go to bed.” He put a hand on Philologos’s shoulder and pushed him toward the door that led through the king’s wardrobes to the cell-like, semiprivate rooms where the attendants slept. “Who knows but that you will get up to find that the world has inverted itself yet again?” He looked around the room at the other attendants as if in warning, but spoke to Philologos. “Remember, the love of kings and queens is beyond the compass of us lesser mortals.”

If anyone noticed, no one commented that he had called the Thief of Eddis a king.

“She didn’t love him,” the guard to Costis’s right said. He sounded relieved. “It was a sham.”

Before Costis could disagree, the man on his left said, “Of course, it was a sham. Would our queen be cow-eyed for the goatfoot that stole her throne? Are you mad?”

Costis opened his mouth again.

“And would you still be loyal to her if she were?” The man across the table spoke.

Costis closed his mouth.

The men around him shrugged their shoulders in contempt. The question was moot to them. Their queen would never be other than beautiful and passionless in their eyes, and their low opinion of the king was in no way changed by what they would have seen in any other man as insane courage in facing Attolia in a rage.

“I would,” said Costis stolidly.

His comrades eyed him in confusion. The question put forward had been so preposterous, it had already been forgotten.

“She is my queen.” Costis frowned at Lepkus, the man across from him, daring him to disagree. “Nothing else matters,” he said. “I will be loyal until the day I die.”

Someone sucked in a breath. The question was no longer rhetoric and doubtful conversational exaggeration. Their loyalty was being questioned, and there was only one response possible.

“Of course,” said the men around them. Some of them taking offense at the question, they all reaffirmed the unswerving loyalty of the Guard. “Of course.”

“Not everyone will,” said someone down the table. Costis couldn’t see who. He leaned forward to look. It was Exis, squad leader in Costis’s old century. He was a patron, educated, and known for being clever.

“The Eddisian will find people to support him,” said Exis. “He is the king, remember, and he can make it worth their while to bolster his power. The queen will need us.”

“Who will win if the king and the queen are at odds?” No one could doubt that they would be. No woman could slap her husband across the face and still pretend affection. No man could be slapped and still pretend to be a man.

“Who will win?” Exis suggested with a shrug, “Baron Erondites.”

If the king and the queen fought each other, the Baron Erondites would wait until they were both too weak to oppose him and then attack. Inevitably. The men around the table nodded in unhappy agreement.

“Where are you going, Costis?” they asked when he pushed himself to his feet.

“To check the duty schedule, and if I am not on it, to my room. I can await my fate there.”

“Don’t look now, but I think your fate is on its way. Our new captain just came in, and he is headed your way.”

“New captain?”

“You hadn’t heard? Enkelis already had the captain’s gear packed and moved out of his quarters. He says the queen freed Teleus, she didn’t reinstate him. He tried to run Aristogiton off, but Aristogiton told him to his face that he hadn’t been relieved of his oath of service and he
wouldn’t leave until the queen told him to go. We’ve all been waiting for the queen to come out and settle Enkelis, but the day is almost over, and she hasn’t left her rooms. Aristogiton and his squad are confined to quarters. Nobody even knows where Teleus is.”

The new captain arrived at their table, and the men respectfully stood. Enkelis nodded at Costis. “You are wanted. Clean yourself up and come with me.”

Costis stepped between the guards and into the king’s guardroom. Sejanus smiled. “Our dear whipping boy is among us again. What brings you, Costis? Hope for revenge?”

“I’m on duty. I am to remain on duty until relieved or until the king dismisses me.”

“And whose orders are those?”

“My captain’s, Lord Sejanus. From whom else would I take my orders?”

Philologos got up from his bed to find that the world had not reinverted itself and was in fact exactly as he’d left it, much to his distress and the distress of many others. The queen did not leave her apartments. The king, when they eventually knocked on his door, got himself out of bed to open it, and told them to go away. He did admit the Eddisian Ambassador, but their conversation did not go sweetly, and Ornon stalked out in a rage.

The queen’s attendants refused to admit anyone to
the queen, and refused to carry in messages, though some did leave on unrevealed errands. Ministers were left to their own devices. Counselors counseled themselves. There was no break in the ordered routine of government, but the palace seethed with disquiet.

Costis ate his meals in the king’s guardroom and slept at night for a few hours on the narrow bench that ran around the walls. The attendants took it in turn to sleep on the wider benches at either side of the doorway to the bedchamber. They were on hand, in case the king called in the night, but he did not.

The next day there were more visitors. Costis, torn by conflicting loyalties, made a mental note of those who came. These were men who might start a new government with the king. They waited in the guardroom while the attendants stepped in to ask if the king would like to see them. Mostly he said no, though he did allow Dite to come sit by his bed for a while. Lady Themis was turned away. An hour later her younger sister was admitted by the guards at the hallway door. She looked pale as she asked an attendant if she could see the king.

“His Majesty is not—”

“Let her in,” said the king from the bedchamber.

Lifting his eyebrows in surprise, the attendant waved Heiro toward the door. She went to the bedside and sat.

They talked in low voices for a while. The king, holding her hand in his, said, “I hope your father appreciates what a good friend you are to me.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” she said softly, and left.

The king slept then for the rest of the afternoon.

C
OSTIS
woke with a start that rolled him off the narrow bench and onto one knee beside it. Groggy, he struggled to wake fully. He’d been asleep for only an hour or so, and had slept only a few hours altogether since the king was attacked. There was screaming. The screaming had woken him. Rubbing his eyes, he staggered across the guardroom and pushed between the men standing there, shoving aside attendants as needed and wondering why they stood like posts in his way. Only when he reached the door and struggled himself with the latch did he understand. The door was locked. The king was screaming on the far side, and they could not get in. He pounded at the door, but it was as solid as the ages. He shouted into the face of the attendant standing helpless beside him, “The key! Where’s the key?”

“We have no key,” Cleon shouted back.

Costis threw up his hands. Spinning, he looked around the room and snatched the gun out of the hand
of the first guard he saw. Leaning it into the crook of his elbow, he pulled open the leather cartridge box on his belt. Even fuddled with sleep, he could load the gun. The gestures were automatic. He tore the paper cartridge open with his teeth and poured a bit into the priming pan, closed the pan and tipped the rest into the barrel, dropped the bullet, still wrapped in paper, into the barrel and rammed it home, then replaced the rammer in its groove beside the barrel and lifted the gun.

“Get back!” he shouted at the men watching him in confusion. “Get back!” he shouted louder when they didn’t move. Not until he put the muzzle against the lock of the door did they understand and dive for cover. There was a burst of light and a shattering blast from the gun. Costis blinked the afterimage from the muzzle flash out of his eyes and looked through the smoke. The door had a chunk as wide as his hand chewed out of it, but the lock still held. Costis reloaded. Everyone in the room was shouting, but no one stopped him. He raised the gun again. This time he turned his face away before he fired. When he looked back, the lock was twisted metal and the door was slightly ajar. He blew out his breath in relief. He’d felt the wind of the second bullet as it ricocheted off the door and past his ear. He didn’t want to have to fire a third time.

The king was sitting up in bed, the bedclothes twisted under him. He was propping himself on the stump of his
right arm and staring down into his blood-covered hand. His nightshirt was spotted red. The room appeared to be otherwise empty, but Costis checked every corner and the latches on the windows to be sure there was no intruder before he turned back to the king, his knees beginning to weaken in the aftermath of the excitement, his hands to shake. By that time the king was surrounded by his attendants, all of them calling suggestions.

“A drink of water, Your Majesty.”

“Some burnt wine?”

“Go away,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.

They had never seemed more like yapping dogs to Costis, although he couldn’t really blame them. With the possible exception of Sejanus they all seemed rattled.

“Just have a sip, Your Majesty,” said one, offering a glass.

“Just a nightmare.”

“A clean shirt—”

“Go away!”
Eugenides shouted.
“Go away!”

The attendants backed off for a moment, but then closed in again. They opened their mouths to speak, but the queen’s voice interrupted from the doorway. “I think His Majesty’s wishes are plain.”

Every attendant turned to her, aghast.

The queen looked back at them. “Go,” she said, “away.”

They bolted for the door.

Costis, beginning from the far side of the bed, and
trying to leave with a little dignity, was the last to reach the door. He looked back. The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop. Without meaning to, he stopped to watch.

She reached out and touched the king’s face, cupping his cheek in her hand.

“Just a nightmare,” he said, his voice still rough.

The queen’s voice was cool. “How embarrassing,” she said, looking at his maimed arm.

The king looked up then, and followed her gaze. If it was embarrassing to wake like a child screaming from a nightmare, how much more embarrassing to be the reason your husband woke screaming. A quick smile visited the king’s face. “Ouch,” he said, referring to more than the pain in his side. “Ouch,” he said again as the queen gathered him into her arms.

Costis turned in confusion to the attendants standing around him. They looked as surprised as he, and Costis felt it wasn’t any of their business, anyway, how the king and queen resolved their quarrel. It wasn’t any business of theirs at all. He reached back for the door. Hooking his hand into the hole where the lock should have been, he seized it by the splintered wood and swung it closed.

The attendants looked at him in outrage, but no one said a word that might draw the attention of the queen.
Costis looked over the shoulders of the attendants and met the eyes of his guard.

“Clear the room,” he ordered.

At that, the attendants did protest in low but vehement tones. Sejanus’s voice cut through. “By what authority do you act with such confidence, Squad Leader?”

Costis didn’t answer. Sejanus knew his rank and the rank hardly mattered. Even as a lieutenant he had no authority over a king’s attendant.

“How do you propose to enforce your order?” Sejanus added in his infuriating and condescending drawl, and in doing so, gave Costis the answer.

“At gunpoint, if necessary,” Costis said.

Sejanus’s hand went to the knife at his waist. Without a moment’s hesitation, half the guards in the room put their hands on their own swords and the other half grounded the butts of their guns and started loading them.

Costis didn’t take his eyes off Sejanus. The rest of the attendants were sheep. Where Sejanus went, the others would follow, and when Sejanus lifted one shoulder and exhaled his contempt, Costis knew he had won.

“I’m sure none of us wish to disturb Their Majesties,” said Sejanus.

In the hallway outside the guardroom, Costis posted his guards. He stood at the door himself after he had checked the rest of the king’s apartment to be sure it was
empty. The hallway was crowded with the king’s attendants and also with the queen’s women. Someone had fetched the benches from down the passage and moved chairs out of the receiving rooms. Costis stifled a yawn and put a hand to his ear, which had begun to throb. It was swollen and stiff with drying blood, and when he looked, he saw blood on his shoulder as well. Evidently the ricochet of the second bullet hadn’t entirely missed him. The queen’s senior attendant approached, and he stiffened. Phresine was an older woman with graying hair neatly twisted away from her face. She smiled at him and stepped close enough to wipe his ear with a white cloth. It was wet and smelled of lavender.

“Well done, Lieutenant,” she murmured as she worked gently to sponge away the blood. When she was done, she smiled again at him and settled on a bench not far away.

Her support was reassuring in the face of the baleful glares from the king’s attendants, and Costis was sorry when she left only a little later. Another of the queen’s attendants, Luria, came down the hallway to speak to her, and when they had exchanged their whispered words, the older woman stood. She nodded to the other attendants, and all the queen’s women glided away, leaving the guards and the king’s attendants alone with each other in the hall.

It was a long night.

The king’s attendants played dice or cards, or lay on the benches and slept. Costis and his guards stood at their posts. Costis wished the king’s attendants could go away, as the queen’s attendants had gone, but he supposed they should be available should the king call for them, as unlikely as that might be. Finally most of the attendants slept.

The guard changed for the dog watch of the night. Costis sent his men back to their quarters but stayed at his post. Only his authority could keep the attendants out of the guardroom. There was no sign of the new captain, Enkelis, although he must have heard about the confrontation between the guard and the attendants. There was no sign of any of the other lieutenants, though they must also have heard. No doubt, they thought it was safest to leave the matter in Costis’s hands and avoid any responsibility for the outcome, Costis thought dryly.

There was a gray light visible in the atrium at the end of the hallway when Phresine returned. Standing in front of Costis, with her back to the others in the hallway, Phresine held out a gold seal ring, set with a carved ruby.

“Come with me, please, Lieutenant,” she said.

Costis shook his head, surprised. He couldn’t leave the king’s door.

She looked up at him gravely and lifted the ring a little higher. It was the seal ring of the Queen of Attolia. Holding it, Phresine spoke with the voice of the queen. To disobey her was to disobey a direct order from the queen.

Costis looked over his shoulder at the closed door behind him. Then back at the queen’s attendant. She offered him no further explanation. He knew, even if he had told no one, that his orders to guard the king, day and night, had come through Enkelis, from the queen herself. He looked again at the crowd in the passage, trying and failing to imagine what might justify leaving the king and queen unguarded.

“My men?” he asked the attendant.

“Leave them here, if you wish. They are not needed.”

“Very well.” The king would be adequately guarded without him. He instructed the squad leader on duty to admit no one to the king’s apartments until the king or the queen summoned them. Then he followed the queen’s attendant.

In the queen’s opulent guardroom, he left his sword and the gun he had appropriated from another guard. No one proceeded further into the royal apartments armed. He followed his guide through a passage and various interconnected rooms to a small chamber, an anteroom by its furnishings, with a couch and a desk and a closed door. Knocking gently, Phresine pressed
the latch and opened the door. She was a small woman, and Costis could easily see over her shoulder into the room. On a gilded chair, waiting for him, was the queen.

Costis blinked.

He walked forward automatically, but his mind was rooms away. Three steps into the queen’s bedroom, he could take in the whole room, paneled in wood, carpeted in gold, with chests and a desk and various chairs and a bed, raised on a dais, with a cloth-of-gold spread. It had no bedposts, no canopy, and no curtains to hide the sleeping occupant.

Costis knew, even before he saw the dark hair on the pillow, who it was. If he hadn’t been so tired, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Eugenides had long since proven that he could move through the palace of Attolia as he pleased. Clearly, both he and the queen could travel to the queen’s room in private if they chose.

“He took a few drops of lethium several hours ago, so I don’t think there is a particular need to be quiet,” said the queen. Costis turned toward her and hastily pulled himself to attention. Nothing could stop the flush of red creeping to his hairline.

She was amused.

“I want you to stay here until he wakes.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“You may sit.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

Costis didn’t move.

“Tell an attendant when he wakes.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

When she was gone, and the door had closed behind her, Costis drew a shaking breath and glanced around the room. Moving cautiously, he approached the bed. The king’s face was turned away. Costis bent to look at it closely, aware that he was taking a liberty very few must have. Eugenides looked very different in his sleep, younger and—Costis searched for a word—gentler. Costis had never thought the king’s expression strained until he saw that strain, by the action of a few drops of poppy juice, relieved.

Thoughtful, he stepped back from the raised bed. There was a low upholstered chair nearby. Costis settled hesitantly onto it. The buckles of his breastplate dug into his side, reassuring him that this was not all a dream.

The morning light was dim. The skies were still gray. Costis yawned. As if in answer to a prayer, Phresine arrived at the doorway with a tray in her hands. He snapped his mouth shut and stood, feeling guilty for sitting down.

She smiled to put him at his ease. “I thought you might like breakfast,” she said.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Costis whispered. “I’m not sure I should.”

“Of course you should,” she said. Her voice was low,
but she didn’t whisper. “You aren’t here on guard duty. He has men in the guardroom to keep him safe. You’re here in case he is…unwell when he wakes.” She put the tray down on a small table beside Costis’s chair, and crossed to the bed to lay her hand on the king’s forehead. He didn’t stir. She slid her hand around his face to cup his cheek and bent to kiss him on the brow, like a mother kissing her child.

Costis stared.

Phresine smiled. “The liberties an old woman can take,” she said. “Even with a king.” She slipped through the door, leaving Costis alone again.

The queen’s bedchamber was as golden as a honeycomb and as peaceful as a tomb. Though Costis was occasionally aware of the quiet bustle of coming and going in the rest of the apartment, the silence in the bedchamber was soporific. He stood and paced across the carpet to keep himself awake, and looked with interest, but not too close an interest, at the queen’s writing desk with its tidy rows of inkwells and pens, and at the row of carved beads on a shelf and the assortment of tiny amphoras on a tabletop. Then he sat back down to watch the king sleep.

Once Eugenides’s head turned on the pillow and he opened his eyes. He looked around the room, puzzled but unconcerned. His gaze settled on Costis. Costis leaned forward in his chair and said, “Go back to sleep.”

Eugenides obediently closed his eyes.

Costis smiled. Behind him someone chuckled and he started. It was Ileia, one of the younger of the queen’s attendants, with her dark hair escaping from its silver net and curling against her neck. She was leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed. “I didn’t think he ever did as he was told,” she said, smiling.